by Brad Warner

On Friday my friend Pirooz, director of Shoplifting from American Apparel, signed a lease for an apartment in Los Angeles, California that he and I will move into in June, 2012. On that very same day — perhaps at the exact same moment — I signed a contract with New World Library to publish my next book There Is No God And He Is Your Creator. This could come out as soon as Spring 2013 or might be pushed back to Fall. We’re not sure yet.

And a new eBook collection called Hardcore Zen Strikes Again will be out any minute now. I think they’re still working out some kinks in formatting. I realized I couldn’t do it myself so the fine folks at Cooperative Press in Cleveland are handling that part. Up till now they’ve only done books about knitting. But Shannon, who runs the company, is a fan of my writing. So this will be their first non-knitting related title.

Hardcore Zen Strikes Again is a collection of essays I wrote for the old Sit Down and Shut Up webpage. Many of the articles I wrote for that page ended up reworked into chapters of Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth About Reality. Many did not. Others were so thoroughly reworked you wouldn’t recognize them. It is articles from the latter two categories that I chose for Hardcore Zen Strikes Again. I’ve also included a chapter that was cut out of Hardcore Zen and an article I wrote for a Japanese monster fanzine consisting mainly of things I wrote about my work at Tsuburaya Productions that were also removed from Hardcore Zen. So the book is sort of like the bonus disc for Hardcore Zen. Hence the title. The essays are each accompanied by new introductions and afterwords talking about how my views on things have totally changed now and why the essays are shit.

Not really. But I am not nearly as loud in my writing as I was in 2001. I say pretty much the same stuff, just in a different way.

Those of you without Kindles or iPads or Nooks need not fret. There will be a print version as well. But the print version will be produced in limited quantities. Whether you’ll be able to find it in stores or not is still an open question. Probably you will.

Going to California is a big move for me, and, in some ways a thoroughly stupid one. It’s stupid because I could have saved myself a lot of hassle and just stayed in Los Angeles. But, really, things there at the time had become un-workable and I needed a change. It’s also stupid because I’m now making way less money than I was when I moved away and am going to a place where the rent is more than twice what I’m paying in Akron.

But it’s also a good move because I liked living in California. It’s sunny. It’s warm. It’s L.A., with all the weirdness that means. I’m going to try getting a teaching gig out there or maybe work in the film industry. Pirooz has a company, which is mainly just him right now, called Sangha Films. Years and years before I ever met Pirooz I had the notion that maybe there could be a Buddhist sangha whose livelihood was supported by making movies. Lots of Buddhist sanghas support themselves with commercial endeavors. Some sanghas make tofu, some bake bread, San Francisco Zen Center runs a luxury tourist resort (Tassajara). So why not movies?

I’m hoping to talk Pirooz into moving in this direction with me. But every time I say something about it he just sort of grunts noncommittally. We’ll see. I envision it as sort of a Zen version of Troma Films. Not in terms of the gore and splatter. But in terms of the way Troma is fiercely independent, knows its audience thoroughly, and makes its way in the world by producing movies that will never be big hits but always sell to its loyal core audience. Pirooz wants to make a zombie movie next. I’m trying to convince him to make it a Zen zombie movie. We’ll see…

Every choice a person makes in life affects their future in ways large and small, foreseeable and unforeseeable. Even a smile or a frown can make a huge difference. But some decisions seem more momentous than others. Signing that book contract and committing to a huge move in the same day seem pretty momentous to me. To be honest, I’m scared shitless. Maybe a year from now you’ll find me living in a cardboard box on Venice Beach trying to sell CD-Rs of my audiobook in order to buy burritos. But maybe not.

165 Responses

There is no cause and effect in physics. The laws of physics are acausal. Otherwise, they couldn't be time invariant. And the laws of physics are not deterministic. That's what all the fuss about quantum mechanics is about. Don't you think you should know what science actually says before arguing what science proves?

From the Buddhist point of view cause and effect is an illusion. Don't you recall the first chapter of the MMK?

It's late – not my fault! I have decided – of my own free will – to crash. I may have a think – can't tell yet – and see if I can come up with anything you don't already know about cause and effect. But – factors beyond my control – I have a busy day tomorrow. We'll see.

… I think if we study MMK, and/or Shobogenzo for that matter, and, more importantly, bring our own practice to bear on them, we might find that both Dogen and Nagarjuna resolved the nihilistic philosophical fallacy that cause and effect, or anything for that matter, is 'an illusion'. Otherwise we might be whiling away our hours in a sort of remote, subjective dreamworld.

Yes, that's a classic negation of *conditioned* existence or, as it might be rendered positively, an affirmation of 'unconditioned existence' (i.e. real things as they are).

Nagajuna was concerned about the misinterpretation of this taken as merely an intellectual/philosophical negation of everything, and rightly so. It seems to be a persistent weakness in Buddhist philosophy:

30. The victorious ones have saidThat emptiness is the relinquishing of all views.For whomever emptiness is a view,That one will accomplish nothing.

It's possible that we live in a completely deterministic universe. Even if that is true, it's also possible that our tiny little brains have absolutely no chance of holding all the data needed to see this determinism. Thus, from the point-of-view of a tiny little brain, we appear to have free will.

Anyone who wants to describe the difference between "real" free will and the "false" experience of free will, knock yourself out.

"Thus, from the point-of-view of a tiny little brain, we appear to have free will."

Hi, Anon.

Now there's someone using our tiny littel brain. I like it!

It's sometimes said that we have an infinite amount of choices at our disposal, but maybe they only appear 'infinite' to us because, well, as you say, we're pretty dumb.

We are limited beings in our bodies and minds in terms of what we can do relative to other observable beings who are limited in their conditions/ways; so it follows that this determines limits on what we can do in any situation.

But how much more dumb is someone that is dragged around by their ingrained mental habits and habitual responses to various stimuli…?(people just like me! I'm not being preachy here) maybe at least we can achieve some sort of level of relative freedom compared to that?

Free will is a product of ego, so is thought. When you attach to thought, you attach to ego and you will never be free. When the ego dies so does the debate involving freedom and determinism. Allow yourself to dissolve into the great cosmos without fear or doubt. Freedom is only that.

"That which we will…, and that which we intend to do and that wherewithal we are occupied:–this becomes an object for the persistance of consciousness. The object being there, there comes to be a station of consciousness. Consciousness being stationed and growing, rebirth of renewed existance takes place in the future, and here from birth, decay, and death, grief, lamenting, suffering, sorrow, and despair come to pass. Such is the uprising of this mass of ill. Even if we do not will, or intend to do, and yet are occupied with something, this too becomes an object for the persistance of consciousness… whence birth… takes place. But if we neither will, nor intend to do, nor are occupied about something, there is no becoming of an object for the persistance of consciousness. The object being absent, there comes to be no station of consciousness. Consciousness not being stationed and growing, no rebirth of renewed existence takes place in the future, and herefrom birth, decay-and-death, grief, lamenting, suffering, sorrow and despair cease. Such is the ceasing of this entire mass of ill."

(SN II 65, Pali Text Society vol. 2 pg 45)

So how does one act in the absence of will, intention, and preoccupation? I would contend that what we truly believe causes us to act, like the hypnotist's subject responding to suggestion, and that such action can take place in the absence of will, intention, or preoccupation, just as a hypnotist's subject can be moved without the exercise of their will or intention.

If you grant that this is possible, then the collection of experiences and that make up what we believe cause our action. We think it's our exercise of will or intention that sets us in motion, physically and mentally, because we have never watched ourselves move without volition, but actually we have no more choice about it than the subject in a deep trance.

Those who think they can resist hypnosis are generally the easiest to hypnotize, that's my understanding. Those who think what they believe has no relationship to their actions, haven't realized what it is that they truly believe.

We cannot know how things really are. But we can develop and modify models that work – representations of how things appear to be. I’m content to recognise how things appear to be, while understanding that the way things appear to be is only the way things appear to be. That goes for a quantum acausal Universe, too – just another model of the way things appear to be. Not to be confused with 'how things really are'.

Jinzang said…Don't you think you should know what science actually says before arguing what science proves?

That is just homeopathetic.

Matthew 7:1 "JUDGE not, that ye be not judged.2 For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.3 And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?4 Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?5 Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye."

Malcolm, a year ago or so the fellow that put together my website took a pile of old Mumbles Pubs (many that are not accounted for in the collections w/that link) with the intention to post facsimiles of at least some of the covers. Occasionally images accompany comix that wind up for sale on E-bay and other sites…Thanks for asking!

"The thing Einstein overlooked was that his very act of weighing the box translated to observing its displacement (say, dr = r2 – r1) within the Earth's gravitational field. But in Einstein's general theory of relativity, he'd found that clocks actually do run slower in gravitational fields (a phenomenon called 'gravitational time dilation')

(…formulas here…)

In other words, after the displacement (r2 – r1) arising from the measurement, the clock is in a gravitational field different from the original one." -"Copernicus"

I'm no physicist, not even much for mathematics, but it's interesting!

I think it says Crum's a star, although the gravity of his & Brad's situation will be different after any measurement, such as by the stars and aliens in the L.A. basin.

Well, it's always scary and it'll get you sooner or later, and since it's going to get you sooner or later and it's scary, then why not do what you want to do. You're not going to be immortal by refusing to take chances…

I think it's kind of liberating to be mortal and it really it can't be much worse than it already is; therefore, why worry?

Of course, it depends on how you define "dead." What we once called dead (e.g. 20 years ago) isn't death at all. As long as you have alpha waves, somebody is home.

Al those "near death" experiences that were written about in the 70s, 80s, and 90s were not even close! The brain chemistry was chugging along – especially the endorphins [human beta-endorphin (beta h-EP)].

I spent 4 hours in an 'alpha only' state and it was nothing. No body thetans, spirits, aliens, or other beings entered or left my body. I was not visited by god, mary, jesus, Jack Kerouac, Hadda-laff-yet Hubbard, Jibraaiyl (Gabriel), or even the Comte Saint-Germain! And I have a vast amout of respect, relitively, for gurus like Guy Ballard!*

First, on the subject of Apple, they are still very much in the computer business and will be so as long as they are in business. Phones, mp3 players, etc. are synched to a home computer and Apple would be crippled without a presence there.

Second, my belief in homeopathy, is not mere belief. it is based on my personal experience using homeopathy. It is exactly the same as my belief in meditation. If I had waited the usual important people to tell me meditation works, I would still be waiting. And the same is true for homeopathy, even more so, as it competes with the most profitable industry in America, except for the oil business. Expect a backlash against meditation, yoga, etc. when doctors start to suggest patients use it instead of drugs.

Spent my days with a woman unkind, Smoked my stuff and drank all my wine. Made up my mind to make a new start, Going To California with an aching in my heart. Someone told me there's a girl out there with love in her eyes and flowers in her hair. Took my chances on a big jet plane, never let them tell you that they're all the same. The sea was red and the sky was grey, wondered how tomorrow could ever follow today. The mountains and the canyons started to tremble and shake as the children of the sun began to awake.

Seems that the wrath of the Gods Got a punch on the nose and it started to flow; I think I might be sinking. Throw me a line if I reach it in time I'll meet you up there where the path runs straight and high.

To find a queen without a king, They say she plays guitar and cries and sings… la la la Ride a white mare in the footsteps of dawn. Tryin' to find a woman who's never, never, never been born. Standing on a hill in my mountain of dreams, Telling myself it's not as hard, hard, hard as it seems.